Diane Hafner

Defining Identity in the Face of Rapid Urban Growth: Changing Times in a Regional Australian City

The Australian regional city of Ipswich is a place undergoing significant change through rapid urban development and population growth. This article is concerned with testing anecdotal views about the importance of ‘community’ to Ipswich residents and what that might consist of. It draws on exploratory research into local constructions of Ipswichs identity and how rapid growth may be impacting it. As a first stage in the research process, six local leaders were interviewed about their perceptions of the city in this changing urban environment. Across the sample, Ipswichs identity was defined by its sense of community, heritage and history, social and economic growth, geography of place, and local leadership and vision. Participants described a positive transformation of Ipswichs identity overall. This article illuminates elements in Ipswichs identity viewed by participants as of local importance. Ipswichs sense of community was the element participants talked most about preserving in the face of urban growth. Discussed in this article are the studys findings, limitations and potential research directions.

Viewing the Past through Ethnographic Collections

Abstract Recent directions in museum policy and curatorial practice have emphasized a collaborative and inclusive approach towards the communities with which museums interact. Within this broader context, this paper considers the experience of working with an Australian Indigenous community, the Lamalama people of far north Queensland, on research into the Donald Thomson Collection. This collection, held by Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, contains many images produced by Thomson and objects collected him in the late 1920s, when forebears of the Lamalama still lived relatively autonomously in the bush. The curatorial importance of recognizing the close and continuing connection between objects, their meanings, and their social locations is reflected in the project. The paper argues for the importance of recognizing the value of personal relationships between curators and source communities, but also for understanding of the complexity in relationships between communities and their heritage in museums, here expressed as relationships of materiality.

Death, funerals and emotion in an Australian Aboriginal community

ABSTRACT This paper discusses emotions as intersubjective states that develop in the interactions between individuals. Central to the discussion is the funeral of an Aboriginal elder in Cape York Peninsula, Australia. The actions of certain of her kin are described, and demonstrate their concern to bridge the gap between the loss of such elders and the uncertainties of a future without their guidance. Funerals are clearly events marking the social change associated with death and allow for intense expressions of grief, but they are also part of the trajectory of everyday life. In the social context discussed, beliefs about intersubjectivity between the spirits of the dead and their living kin inform all spheres of action, including the economic, and require observance of the cultural value of ‘respect’. Understanding emotions as interactive states engaged in such locally significant events sheds light on the relationship between them and collective political aspirations.

Objects, agency and context: Australian Aboriginal expressions of connection in relation to museum artefacts

This article discusses the interactions of a group of Australian Aboriginal people with museum-based artefacts and photographic images, and their re-connection to these materials inside and outside the museum setting. Themes of connection and agency relating to these materials were invoked in the process. The complex social biographies of some objects mean they are at times discussed as having agency, or interpreted as being culturally perceived as such. In the case detailed here, the affect expressed in responses to a variety of objects indicates different interpretations. The discussion therefore considers the logic of connection expressed in Aboriginal ontologies to argue against ideas of the agency of objects. It is instead suggested that the meaning invested in them is related more to their material qualities and the contexts in which they are perceived. This consideration is grounded in a discussion of a collaborative project between researchers and Aboriginal people in which these matters arose.