‘Instructor’s Name’
Suburban Space
If you look back at the history of Australia, you will find that race had always played a central part in the formation of a national identity. Historically, race had been perceived as a benchmark, to measure the eligibility of a person to be called an Australian national and also worked as an assurance in guaranteeing the particularized homogeneity. For the entire part of twentieth century and even till the turn of this century, uniformity in racial culture and language was considered to be the most pressing issue of the nation. From the late 1780s, the predominant culture in this continent has been Anglo-Celtic. But from the beginning of the twentieth century many settlers from around the globe started migrating to Australia and by the year 2000, there were close to 6 million migrants in the country. So now, we have a country which does not have homogeneity in culture but houses people of many races, religion and languages.
Most of these migrants settle in the cities of Australia for obvious employment reasons. Settling in a city enables them not only to get good job opportunities, but also helps them find other services like education, health care and socializing opportunities. In a country where the White Anglo—Celtic community is the dominating majority, these migrants are in most parts victims of marginalization. This racism gave birth to the politics of resistance that is often seen in the groups of migrants.
Housing has emerged as the central concept of Diaspora and building a house has become a significant part of the process of migrants settling in their new found country. When they erect a building, the immigrants try to build a bridge between the country of their origin and their newly developed cultural alliances. A house is a significant aspect of Australian culture and according to a publication by the Australian Financial Gazette in the year 1891, it is an important duty of an Australian to procure a house and after the World War II a policy statement conveyed that housing is significant to the national interest. Thus, a house has more than an economical and architectural value in Australia.
So when a new building is inserted into the suburban of an Australian city, it is immediately measured by its extent of deviation from the usual elements of the township. New architectural designs are immediately frowned upon, more so if they have excessive cross-cultural contents and ethnic expressions. Particularly the buildings of migrants which are radically different from the Anglo-Celtic architecture are considered problematic. The disputes arise mainly in the way of usage of space by the migrant houses, overlooking indigenous cultural aspects and them not fitting into their environment which has a fixed style of buildings. This essay aims at analyzing the suburban space with relation to the ethnic architecture and issues of identity.
According to Joseph Pugliese, the cultural practices of the migrant community are their way of exhibiting resistance and upholding their identity, in the face of dominant regimes of the country. He advocates that multiculturalism is Australia should be acknowledged and recognized by various means. In a television debate in 1998 Howard, argued that the focus should be on those elements, which bring together the Australians and not on the differences that distinguishes an overseas born individual and the Australian born people. Expanding on these lines, Alan Jones in his radio show aired on November 2003, states that people of different ethnicities should find a way to co-exist under the Australian cultural Umbrella and goes on to sum up his editorial by saying, the country is multi-racial but is single cultural which is the Australian way of life.
Till the year 1940, 90% of the population consisted of people of British or NZ origin. Later immigrants from other parts of Europe, from countries like Italy and Greece, started settling in Australia and this marked the transformation of the homogeneous Australian population. The new settlers brought in new forms of architecture and this change was met with resistance and intolerance. The way an Australian house should look was considered a matter of national pride and the new changes in housing designs brought in by the immigrants have always been a centre of controversy.
According to Pugliese, the construction of a building by immigrants is a process of material alteration of the signifiers of memory, whereby the past is altered and used to suit the present Diasporic cultural requirements. He explains his views on the usage of suburban space for cultural identity by presenting a reading on the Pedavoli shrine located in the western suburbs of Sydney.
The Shrine was built by Joe and Rosa Pedavoli who migrated to Australia in the 1950s and moved to these suburbs in 1965. They had seven children and they had constructed a house amidst a garden in which they are living ever since. In 1971, tragedy struck the family when their son Vince succumbed to Legionnaire’s disease. When Rosa was trying desperately to cope up with that unbearable trauma, she was presented a Madonna statue by a well wisher and she was reminded about the legend of Bombile (Pugliese, 2005).
The couple decided to erect a shrine in memory of their son. They first constructed a niche in their front yard, which was much bigger than the statue they possessed and they bought a larger statue to fit the niche. Then they decided to conduct a monthly mass and the gathering steadily grew every month. Rosa removed the arrows piercing the body of Saint Sebastian, which she recovered from its abandoned place outside a church and found a place for it in their shrine. As the number of mass attendees increased, more and more modifications were done to the existing shrine. The shrine was enriched by contributions of many community members, both by material gifts and gifts of labor. Some donated statues, decorative materials, furniture etc, while some people volunteered to paint the walls and ceilings (Pugliese, 2005).
A closer study of this shrine throws light on, how different Calabrian practices and images have been reconfigured, to an unexpected array of images and configurations. Pugliese goes on to explain how a shrine constructed as a place of mourning by one particular family became a point of cultural coherence, where many volunteers from different communities contributed in varied ways. The front gate of the Pedavoli residence is always open (which is against the norms for housing in Australia) as a gesture of welcome and warmth. The benches are arranged in the front yard in a manner similar to a central park, to accommodate the visitors. The Municipal council has demanded the demolition of shrine citing that it violates the laws pertaining to usage of front yards. In their reply to this notice, the Pedavolis state that their action is no different than erecting a fish pond in their front yard, thereby underscoring the Anglo centric influence in the housing policy of Australia (Pugliese, 2005).
According to Pugliese, this shrine embodies contestation and resentment the immigrants have towards the dominant Anglo-centric culture. Pugliese also conveys how he hates the ‘Welcome Wall’ whereby an immigrant can include his name in the wall by paying a fees, saying that this wall reminds him the memorial walls erected in the memory of dead soldiers. He adds that such walls make the immigrant just a name among thousands of others and looks much more like the wall is mourning their arrival to the country rather than celebrating it. He concludes his essay saying that the Pedavoli shrine is a significant site for redefining the usual character of suburban space and calls it the embodiment of cultural coherence exhibited in the wake of disposition and migration (Pugliese, 2005).
Pugliese is also concerned that the listing of migrant heritage sites has a risk of reproducing colonial patterns. He notes that at the end of the twentieth century, the ‘Migrant Heritage in Australia kit’ was launched by the Heritage commission, after years of neglecting sites which had historical values to immigrants. But he says that this heritage kit has failed to take into account the indigenous history of the past. Being a migrant, who grew up in Australia prior to the multiculturalism that prevails today, Pugliese is able to relate how difficult it would be to get sites with historical importance to migrants, listed a heritage sites (Pugliese, 2002).
He takes the example of Bonegilla Migrant Centre in Darebin and the Australian Hall, Sydney to drive home his point. He states how the aboriginal history concerning these two places were either masked or ignored, by the authorities and proper reasons for listing these sites were not mentioned in any official document. He says how the Bonegilla was a place of mass massacre of non-native Australians and how the Sydney Hall was the place of organized protests for equal rights for migrants in the year 1938 and how these two incidents did not find mention in any of the documents accompanying the heritage listing (Pugliese, 2002).
He also explains how activists had to fight for 5 long years to list Australian hall as a heritage site because the officials did not consider it as ‘traditional’. He calls for a uniform national process for identifying and listing national heritage sites and for proper research of the colonial history of the country. He wants documentation of many oral histories, concerning the atrocities committed to the indigenous people and to initiate decolonizing practices (Pugliese, 2002).
The phenomenon of Australian multiculturalism can be metaphorically compared with the suburb of the cities, where the Australian dreams are related to a house standing proudly with its own garden. The story of Said and Souad explains this phenomenon better. They grew up in the village of Breeh, in Lebanon, where people of the village, grew vegetables for the household in their own farm. Every family had a farm to cater to the needs of the household and excess, if any, is shared with the neighbors are sold in the city market. They stored for the winter, socialized with the neighbors and the entire community would gather in front of their houses in the evening, to have a friendly banter and play a hand of cards (Gleeson, Jane et al, 2001).
The civil war broke and Said and Souad migrated to Australia. When they lived in the government allotted flats they missed having a garden immensely. At last, they saved enough money to buy a place in the suburbs and the house they built there is much smaller than the garden surrounding it. They today produce vegetables not only for their own use, but also gift the surplus vegetables to neighbors and now they have a very good relation with their Italian neighbors due to this. In a country where everything from culture to language is different, this family has been able to build relations thanks to their farming expertise. They also host outdoor parties and share gardening tips with others in the area. When asked why he grows vegetables when he can buy them in the local market, Said answers that he guess, it is in his blood (Gleeson, Jane et al, 2001). Thus, this garden has become their way of carrying out the tradition of their origin country and establishing their identity in a host country.
Mirjana Lozanovska explains that under the migration process the individual leaves his country, culture and language to embrace a new country. This process often requires suppression of the old language and culture which is sometimes manifested by abjection. She argues that a migrant home can give insight into the spatiality experienced by the migrants. She examines the message conveyed by the figures of eagles and lions adorning the gateway of migrant houses. Since these are symbolic representation of aggression and defense, she wonders why migrants find the need for defending themselves and against whom is this show of defense aimed at (Lozanovska, 1997).
She adds that the typical spacious working class houses are symbolic projection of their mother land or the country from which they migrated. Mirjana states that a migrant’s home is his site of political resistance and image of territoriality. She narrates a story when an editor of a magazine, visits the household of a foreign origin family and asks the mother of the family to narrate her family story. But the lady instead of offering information offers food and her recipe ended up being printed in the next edition of the magazine.” Food instead of words”, Mirjana says makes multiculturalism way more digestible in Australia. She concludes by saying an abject migrant is ambiguous and the abjection should be rejected and not covered or contained (Lozanovska, 1997).
In conclusion, the architecture of migrant houses has challenged the traditional Anglo-centric distinctive form of housing. While their gardens, symbolic statues and front yard shrines, reflect the cultural identity derived from their country of origin, it is definitely perceived to be show of abjection and non-conformity to a hegemonic Australian national identity. In short, the suburban space has been transformed into a site of resistance by the migrant houses and it is their symbolic refuge and defense against the dominant Anglo-centric ideologies (Lozanovska, 1997).
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References
- Gleeson, Jane et al "Said and Souad Lahoud" in Marrickville Backyards , Gleeson, Jane; Hamilton, Mary Anne; Morgan, George; Wynne-Jones, Megan , 2001 , 18-25
- Lozanovska, Mirjana.1997. "Abjection and Architecture: The Migrant House in Multicultural Australia, " in Post-Colonial Spaces, eds. G. Nalbantoglu & W.C. Thai, (Princeton University Press, New York, 1997, pp. 101-129)
- Pugliese, Joseph .2002 Migrant heritage in an indigenous context : for a decolonising migrant historiography, Journal of intercultural studies, Vol. 23, Issue 1, p.5-18, Carfax Publishing
- Pugliese, Joseph .2005. A Toplitology of mourning: practices of memory and diasporic transpositions of space. Studi d’italianistica nell’Africa australe/Studies in Southern Africa, Vol. 18, Issue 1, p.67-98. Association of Profe-ssional Italianists .
