THE SECOND MEDIA AGE – MEDIA CONVERGENCE, GLOBALISATION, AND PROPAGANDA MODEL

What do theorists mean by the 'second media age'? Do the kinds of media forms emerging suggest the need for new sociological concepts and analytic tool?

In any discussion of new media, a question that needs to be addressed is why some media are considered to be 'new'. It is however difficult to understand different degrees of 'newness' among and across various media, partly because the rate of change in media technologies, services, and uses has been so rapid that what we call 'new' in media technologies will quickly become dated. This is also because new media is basically an advance of old media. For instance the technology of the MP3 player or the iPOD is fundamentally a development from their former audio technologies such as Discman, Walkman, and Radio.

Until the 1980s media relied primarily upon print and analogue broadcast models, such as those of television and radio. The last twenty-five years have seen the rapid transformation into media, which are predicated upon the use of digital computers, such as the Internet and computer games. However, these examples are only a small representation of new media. New Media has become a significant element in everyday life. It allows people to communicate, bank, shop and entertain. The global network of the Internet, for instance, connects people and information via computers. In this way the Internet, as a communication medium of new media, overcomes the gap between people from different countries, permitting them to exchange opinions and information. This essay will discuss what theorists mean by ‘the second media age’ or what we call new media. This essay also will analyse the relationship between media convergence and globalisation to consider the need for new sociological concept and analytic tool with reference to the emergence of the new media. These aspects will be discussed in turn in this essay.

Meyrowitz (1985:317) states that our advanced technologies stage allow us to hunt and gather information rather than food. The evolution in media has changed the way we communicate by altering the ways in which we transmit and receive social information. This evolution has led us to what Fritz Machlup called the information society. As Webster (1994:315) puts it The common definition of the information society emphasises spectacular technological innovation. The key idea is that breakthroughs in information processing, storage, and transmission have led to the application of information technologies in virtually all corners of society. In other words this evolution route to the information society attend to the convergence of telecommunications and computing. In this sense information processing and storage technologies (e.g. computer) lead to widespread distribution.

In general we can define new media as those forms that combine computing and information technology (IT), communication networks, and digitised media and information content. The new media can also be thought of as digital media. According to Flew (2002:10) digital media are forms of media content that combine and integrate data, text, sound, and images of all kinds; are stored in digital formats, and distributed through networks based upon broadband fibre-optic cables, satellites, and microwave transmission systems. The digitalisation of information, combined with the development of related electronic technologies such as microprocessors, and so on has greatly increased the capacity to store and transmit information and has created the basis for a convergence of information and communication technologies, so that information can be converted relatively easily between different communication media.

The capability of new media to be easily changeable and adaptable at any forms of storage and transmission has assisted the information to be broadened. All forms of information also could be shared and changed among a large number of people who can access the net and all the way through enormous geographical area by using networks based upon broadband and satellite. In short new media have given a huge contribution for society to rapidly gain the information all around the world. Through digital media, massive amounts of digital information can be stored in small spaces such as compact disc and USB drive or flash drive which is a small, portable data storage device that plug into USB port of computer. These unique characteristics of digital media bring efficiency in how the information spreads all around the world. Therefore new media have brought broad impact in our society particularly in term of broadcasting information around the world simultaneously.

New media rely on digital technologies, allowing for previously separate media to converge. Media convergence is defined as a phenomenon of new media and this can be explained as a digital media. The idea of 'new media' captures both the development of unique forms of digital media, and the remaking of more traditional media forms to adopt and adapt to the new media technologies. Convergence captures development futures from old media to new media. Barr (2000:22-8, in Flew 2000) divides convergence in three levels. The first level is functional convergence, which is according to Miles (1997, in Flew 2000:18) as information and media content is increasingly processed through computer-based information technology systems and carried to its end-users across broadband telecommunications networks. According to Flew, functional convergence occurs when technological solutions to a variety of different technical problems end up using the same technological process to solve what were very different problems. For example, collecting news is one problem. Disseminating news is another. Up until the 1970's, news was collected by reporters using a very different series of technologies to those used to disseminate these. Since 1970's, information and media content is being processed through computer based it systems and carried to end users through broadband telecommunication networks.

The second level of convergence is industry convergence, which involves a series of takeovers, mergers, and strategic alliances that strengthened linkages between the computing and IT industries, telecommunications companies, and the media sector (Flew, 2002:19). This is for instance Microsoft and Nine Network to create NineMSN, Yahoo and Channel 7 become Yahoo7, or the Telstra and Foxtel Linkup in Australia. Many media businesses are now becoming part of global entertainment oligopoly. The formation of alliances as a product of convergence has meant that many former great media companies have now been subsumed into larger entertainment conglomerates. For instance Disney/ABC, Viacom/CBS, NBC/Universal, Time Warner and News Corporation are four huge corporations, which dominate the world's publishing and entertainment business right now. Takeovers, mergers and strategic alliance have reinforced the power of media conglomerates to broaden their empire. In this logic industry convergence in the media occurs when technology developing to earn more money.

The third level is convergence products and services which are forms of media and information content that take advantage of a networked broadband infrastructure, the capabilities provided by digitization, and the scope for interactivity and user customization of service ((Flew, 2002:20). This is for instance products and services provided by telecommunications and information services companies such as Telstra and Optus in Australia. These companies not only provide mobile telecommunication services but also broadband access and content, and or carriage service providers and ISPs. Convergent products and services are increasingly being directed to consumers during the 2000s, such as the capacity to access e-mail and other Internet services through Short Message Service (SMS) – enabled mobile telephones, networked games consoles such as Sony's Playstation 2 and Microsoft's X-box, or through digital television.

Three levels of convergence are significant because they affect media as a powerful source to distribute information – e.g. idea/ideology/certain discourse – with certain agenda rapidly and simultaneously around the world. Flew (2002) states that as a result of media convergence and or the evolution of new media technologies, globalisation occurs. In the most general sense globalisation refers to the growing interconnectedness of different parts of the world, which give rise to complex forms of interaction and interdependency. (Thompson, 1995:149). This means that space and time is no longer forming a boundary among people around the world to share and exchange information. Globalisation thus shortens the distance between people all over the world by the electronic communication.

New media radically break the connection between physical place and social place, making physical location much less significant for our social relationship. As Webster (1999:320) puts it
Courtesy of immediate and effective information processing and exchange, economics has become truly global, and with this has come about a reduction in the constraints of space. Companies can now develop global strategies for production, storage, and distribution of goods and services; financial interests operate continuously, respond immediately, and traverse the globe. The boundaries erected by geographical location are being pushed further and further back.
News used to be collected by using different kind of technologies such as camera and film. It then would be disseminated using other different technologies such as newspapers, radio, and television. It took days to publish the information around the world. Today, however what happened on the other side of the world will be broadcasted and circulated around the world in count of second through the convergence of digital media, e.g. 9/11 attacks – 2001, Indian Ocean Tsunami – 2004, and The 2006 FIFA World Cup. News collected and then distributed through the convergence of computer-based technological system and broadband telecommunication networks, satellite, or microwave transmission systems. Since all this process of colleting and disseminating information can be solved through one source called networks, we now see the other side of the world not as far as we thought from our home. Communication seems easier by using the same language called globalisation.

What globalisation should mean was that the boundaries of nation states were eroding, that people were gaining the freedom to mingle freely and adopt a multinational/multi-ethnic/international sense of the self. When we all could cut and paste an identity for ourselves that drew from the best that cultures of the world have to offer us. Globalisation should mean when everyone could draw from the distinctiveness of the cultures around them and create their own unique blend of what it meant to be human. When we could take in the cuisine of Asia and the Middle East mix with this the spiritual outlook of the Dali Lama. (Darrell, 2005:56). However, rather than having this cosmopolitan mix, globalisation has been referred to as the McDonaldisation of the world. This perspective sees what is lost when Mcfries – represents American culture – replace croissant or any other given cultures of the world. It looks at the amazing cultural diversity that capitalism demands began to take over. As Ritzer (1993:1) puts it McDonaldization,...is the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world.





According to Thompson (1995: 161) The development of new technologies has played an important role in the globalisation of communication in the late twentieth century, both in conjunction with the activities of communication conglomerates and independently of them. The spread of American media including TV, film and American music artists, has been the main component of what we called Americanization of other countries. American TV shows are broadcast around the world. Many of the shows are broadcast through American broadcasters and their subsidiaries such as HBO Asia, CNBC Europe, Fox Channel and CNN International. All of what is known as the 'big four' American broadcasters have international distributors, for example HBO broadcasts to over 20 countries. Many of these distributors broadcast mainly American programming on their TV channel. American films are also extremely popular globally. Many of the world's biggest computer companies are also American, such as Microsoft, Apple Inc., Dell, and IBM. Much of the software used world wide is created by American based companies. The two largest personal computer companies, Dell and Hewlett Packard, which maintain over 30% of the market, are American based. In this perspective it seems that globalisation, as we know it in the twentieth century, can also be thought of as the result of culture imperialism.

The central proposition of cultural imperialism is that certain dominant cultures threaten to overwhelm more vulnerable ones, for example America over Europe and Asia, and Western domination over the rest of the world. This is for instance The United States (and other 'western' countries) still dominates cultural production and the direction of media and cultural flows. Consider the way that United States news, imagery and products continue to dominate the world. In The Propaganda Model, Edward S. Herman tries to explain why the mainstream US media perform as they do using a propaganda model. He claims that the propaganda model is a model of media behaviour and performance with variable effects. As he puts it:
The [propaganda] model does suggest that the mainstream media, as elite institutions, commonly frame news and allow debate only within the parameters of elite perspectives and that wen the elite is really concerned and unified and/or when ordinary citizens are not aware of their own stake in an issue or are immobilised by effective propaganda, the media will serve elite interests uncompromisingly. (Herman, 2002:103).

Herman (2002:102) explains how the propaganda model generally works by stating that:
Its crucial structural factors derive from the fact that the dominant media are firmly embedded in the market system. They are profit seeking business, owned by very wealthy people (or other companies); and they are funded largely by advertisers who are profit-seeking entities, and who want their advertisements to appear in a supportive selling environment.
It is not the major media institution of this century – press, radio, television – have manipulated or dictated to audiences what they must think, rather, they have influenced what they can think about. As Barr (2000:162) puts it media and communication institutions are central players in influencing and legitimising individual and national identity. What we choose to see as critical issues in society depends in part on how the media constructs its agendas of discourse. Information that spreads globally around the world is more likely created and controlled by the owners of media institutions and or media conglomerates with their specific agenda. From this perspective rather than being neutral, professional, objective, and restrained, media institutions exist to express one single voice to controls the whole industry as well as to make profit.

In conclusion, it appears that the relationship between media convergence and globalisation have explained what theorists mean by 'the second media age' or what we call as new media. It occurred that media convergence is defined as a phenomenon of new media, and that globalisation occurs as a result of the three levels of media convergence. Through the intersection between media convergence and globalisation seem that the new media emerging has been explained clearly using the propaganda model, therefore the need for new sociological concept and analytic tool is unnecessary.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barr, Trevor (2000), newmedia.com.au, St. Leonard: Allen & Unwin

Darrell, Aaron (2005), Critical Theories For Media Studies, Sydney: Aporia
Publications.

Flew, Terry (2002), New Media: an Introduction, South Melbourne: Oxford University
Press.

Herman, Edward S. (2002), ‘The Propaganda Model’ in Denis Mcquail (ed.) Mcquail’s Reader in Mass Communication Theory, London: Sage Publications.

Meyrowitz, Joshua (1985), No Sense Of Place, New York: Oxford University Press.

Thompson, John B. (1995) The Media and Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Ritzer, George (1993), The McDonaldization of Society, California: Pine Forge Press.

Webster, Frank (1999), The Media Reader, London: Sage Publications.

THE RACIALISATION OF CRIME AND CULTURAL PANICS

What are the key issues that emerge from the yoking of crime to ethnicity, and the consequent criminalisation of specific ethnic minorities? Discuss in the context of Collins et al's essay and Of middle Eastern Appearance.

The way we can differentiate between the categorised of ethnic and racial is that ethnic refers to your country of origin e.g. Greek Australian, Italian Australian, Sri Lankan Australian, and so on. Racial is the bureaucratic ways in which we are still classified along racial hierarchy and grouping e.g. we might be identified as Caucasian, Black, and Asian. Racialisation here is understood as the ways in which complex social phenomena are explained and assessed mainly in term of ethnic and racial categories of social perception. Therefore Racialisation of crime is always attitudes of racial prejudice and understood in racialised term.

There has been a series of events, which have been subject to much media coverage and public debate in Australia over the last decade, and increasing in the late 1990s about 'ethnic crime gangs', 'race rapes', 'invasion' of asylum seeker or 'boat people', the terrorist attacks 9/11 in the USA, and the Bali Bombing in October 2002. These events have constructed the basis of sequences of fear and moral panic towards Arabic-speaking background and especially those of Muslim faith. Such wave of panic have been deliberately caused and encouraged not only by the mouth of shock-jocks – talkback radio but also from the mouth of opportunist politicians.

Public discourse on ethnic gangs has been very pervasive in all types of Sydney media since late 1998. Television news programs, radio talk back shows and newspapers have been giving the issue of ethnic crime and ethnic gangs repeated headline coverage. Moreover, this coverage has directly linked ethnic crime and ethnic gangs to specific ethnic and regional groupings of immigrants in particular Lebanese and immigrants of Middle Eastern appearance have come in for particular attention.

There are suburbs in Sydney's west that have become identical with "ethnic" crime. Cabramatta is identical with "Vietnamese triads" and Bankstown is identical with "Lebanese gangs". Based on a small number of crimes committed in the Bankstown area in the past six years, including the stabbing death of 14-year-old Edward Lee, the drive-by shoot-up of the Lakemba police station, and the gang-raping of a number of young white women by a group of young Lebanese Australians, the corporate media has run a sensationalist campaign about a "crime wave" in South Western Sydney involving "Lebanese gangs" or "Middle Eastern crime gangs". This essay will discuss the key issues that emerge from the yoking of crime to ethnicity, and the consequent criminalisation of specific ethnic minorities, focusing on Arab – Australian or people from what we might be broadly identified as a "Middle Eastern" ancestry. These two aspects will be discussed in the context of Collins et al’s essay and a short film Of middle Eastern Appearance.

Many researches and data available to date are not of sufficient quality to support the claim that there is a clear positive relationship between crime and ethnicity in Sydney. People in Australian cities like Sydney however still worry so much about criminal gangs, particularly if these gangs are ethnic or racial minorities or the "other". Lebanese crime incidents in Sydney in the early spring of 1998, the gang raping by a group of young Lebanese Australians and The 2005 Cronulla Riots are some of the examples of what media in Australia called "ethnic" crime. As Collin et al (2000:55-56) put it fear of crime among section of the Australian community was transformed into a fear of ethnic crime... the words 'Lebanese', 'Middle Eastern', and 'ethnic gangs' began to be increasingly associated with images of, and worries about, criminality in Sydney.

From the beginning, the crime was casually linked by police and media to ethnicity, the perpetrators were described in racial terms and the image of 'ethnic' gangs was raised by police and media, feeding off each other. Two weeks after the Punchbowl stabbing, gunshots were fired into nearby Lakemba police station. While no-one was injured, there followed a spiralling of press briefings from police spokespeople, comment on talkback radio, statements by parliaments and other public figures, letters to the editor, press editorials. These conditions then led to date of a classic 'moral panic', as defined by Stanley Cohen:
A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylised and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges, or deteriorates and becomes more visible. (1973:9 in Poynting, 2002:147).

Again Alan Jones led the 2GB talkback hosts in creating moral panic. In November 2003 Jones pushed the race angle of criminal gang gun violence in his Today Show editorial. Jones argues While this (shooting) is happening in Punchbowl, Greenacres and Bankstowns of Sydney, providentially, we don't hear about them in Perth, or Glenelg, or Bendigo or Wagga or Dalby or Cairns. Which means we have to confront reality. It must have something to do with the people who are living in this area. (Lygo, 2004:134). Moreover, after criticising loudly and angrily against gun violence by youths of "Middle Eastern appearance" Jones argues Well it's quite plain that there are some people who don't want to live by the standards that Australians expect of those who live here. Is this proof of the failure of a multicultural society? (ibid., 135) It is clear that violence is now typically linked to ethnicity by shock jocks that simplify the debate by highlighting ethnicity and religions rather than social and economic factors as the cause of violent actions. Jones concludes his editorial by stating We are multi-racial but monocultural. And if there are some people who can’t live under the Australian cultural umbrella, then we are better off without them (ibid.,135) In other words Jones points out that 'Australian culture' is higher and greater than other cultures by declaring we are better off without people who can't live under the Australian culture umbrella. The commentary like this is now usual in the tabloid media.

The debate of 'ethnic' criminal gangs by the tabloid media tend to focus on nationality or physical appearance of the perpetrators rather than the complex socio-economic factors that lead to criminal behaviour. According to Collin et al (2000:55) The criminal in Sydney had a new police identikit profile. NSW police force uses the ethnic descriptor of Middle Eastern appearance in order to construct its identity-kit profiles. In other words the ethnic descriptor of Middle eastern appearance is a racist construct which assumes that everyone from Middle East looks the same, and automatically identifiable as Middle Eastern. The ethnic descriptor of Middle Eastern appearance is a type of structural contradiction or a paradoxical formulation i.e. I am of Middle Eastern appearance – dark skin, black hair, black beard, wearing of hijab (veil) and so on – and I am not Middle Eastern. (Pugliese, 2003:5).

Pugliese (2003:5) argues that:
Everything in this [ethnic] descriptor is predicted on situating the interpellated subject within a geographical location: this descriptor assumes its animating essence precisely through its naming and invocation of a geopolitical place [i.e. the Middle East]. Yet, this descriptor, when applied to individual bodies, obliterates the specificity of geography as such, as it sweeps up into its biometric grid bodies from across a range of countries that fall outside the geography of the Middle East.

Moreover, Pugliese (2003) states that this ethnic descriptor is an Orientalist construct. According to Said (1978:205) The Oriental is seen as degenerate, primitive or backward, uncivilised, unreliable and sexually rapacious, with an 'aberrant mentality' and a tendency to despotism. Orientals are rarely seen as people, but as problems to be solved or confined – and there is a particular fear of the Oriental male. Furthermore, Said (1978:287) argues that Film images emphasise the Arab Oriental as dishonest and menacing, physically violent and an 'oversexed degenerate'. In other words as an Orientalist construct, ethnic descriptor forms its targets as demonic, unlawful, violent and naturally criminal. The best example of this is how television newscast and cinema keep promoting the notion of evil and dangerous Arab particularly after the airborne attacks in the US 9/11 in 2001 and the Bali bombings in October 2002. The racial stereotype is also portrayed in a short film 'Of Middle Eastern appearance', through the scene where woman in a car suddenly looked panic and locked her car’s door when she saw three Arabian boys passing her car.Arab and 'terrorist' are by now an almost natural adjective/noun grouping. Images and imaginings of the Arab also immediately conjure up other qualifiers – Hezbollah, Hamas, bombings, Muslim fundamentalism, fanaticism, and so on. Not only do these almost natural combinations create the Arab as Other, but locally they immediately pose the Arab Other as a real threat to an authentic Australia. (Fraser, Melhem, Yacoub, 1997:76).
This means Middle Eastern appearance, Arab-ness, and Islam are seen to be the same thing, and are seen to be essentially and pathologically evil, inhuman, violent and criminal. Terror, violence, Islam all pose an immediate and real threat which must be faced and defeated if the real vision of Australia is to be upheld and defended as White English Speaking civilised and Christian.

Collins et al also argue that part of problem with the debate on ethnic crime in Sydney is that the media's use of the terms "Middle Eastern", Lebanese "Ethnic" reinforce myths of ethnic homogeneity. This then promotes a fallacy of composition. That is according to Collins et al (2000:60) if we focus on ethnicity as a factor as if it were a cause of crime, the misdeeds of a minority criminal element of different ethnic communities are attributed to all others who share that cultural background. This means through the use of the "fallacy of composition" it standardize whole ethnic communities as "criminally predisposed". In other words merely because some members of a community commit crime, the entire community is constructed as automatically criminal. As Mukherjee puts it
If an Australian commits a misdemeanour, responsibility for it is attributed to him individually. If a migrant commits a similar misdemeanour it is usually reported in such a way that the fact that he is a migrant, rather than the crime itself, is featured and the responsibility for the offence is thus shared by the whole migrant population. (in Lygo 2004:130)

The use of fallacy of composition indeed affects the whole people who share the same cultural background or are considered having similar religious beliefs and values. For instances the bombing of World Trade Centre was portrayed in the news as an attack against America and its coalition by non-western figures or groups i.e. Al-Qaeda, Palestinians = Terrorists. Thus people, who are considered as Arabs or figures of Middle Eastern appearance will be judged and accused as part of terrorist, then discriminated and treated as criminal. What happened to Mamdouh Habib – and his family – after his release from detention in Egypt and Guantanamo Bay is one of the best examples of the effect of the use of fallacy of composition. According to Osuri (2006: para 2) …since Habib’s return to Australia, governmental attempts to silence him as if he were a terrorist… .

The same treatment happened to the refugees and asylum seekers which invariably described as "Middle-Eastern" when they arriving on Australian territory off the coast of /western Australia, throughout 2000 and up to August 2001. The Australian government refused permission for the ship to enter Australia's territorial waters, insisting on their disembarkment elsewhere. They were disparaged and devalued then claimed without evidence, that many of them 'maybe' associating them with terrorist. The asylum seekers linked to the deepening concern regarding terrorist activity, arising at the same time as the refugee crisis: the Daily Telegraph in its editorial column claimed that, 'While on board, SAS members were able to place under surveillance a suspected agent of the Osama bin Laden terrorist network' (Daily Telegraph 13/10/01:24 in Poynting, Noble, Tabar & Collins, 2004:25). As with the link to terrorism, the accusation that the asylum seekers were bad parents through the infamous 'children overboard affair', only served to strengthen the popular opinion that refugees would not be good and decent Australians. Prime Minister Howard repeated, I don’t want, in Australia, people who would throw their own children into the sea (Four Corners 15/04/02, in Poynting, Noble, Tabar & Collins, 2004:27).

We have seen the emergence in recent years of a highly racialised framing of current events, around crime and terrorism, on a local, national and international level. This framing works to marginalise certain groups because crime images are typically structured through oppositions of us and them, good and bad, victim and villain, right and wrong. These oppositions are then understood in racialised term. An investigation into Lebanese or Middle Eastern crime in Sydney is the same time an investigation into racialisation of crime. That is according to Collin et al (2000:92) attitudes of racial prejudice, directly or indirectly shape practices of individual and institution, including the labour marker and the police. The racialisation of crime functions to construct particular ethnic or racial groups as naturally or inherently criminal. Another term for this is racial profiling.

Racial profiling means that according to your look or how you look, you will be deemed as a suspect, in advance having committed any offences. For example opposition to and suspicion of refugees and so-called illegal have been a dominant theme in racialisation of crime discourse particularly in Australia. As the function of racial profiling is to construct racially targeted subjects as guilty in advance of having committed any criminal offence, thus refugees, asylum seekers, Arab and/or Muslim-Australians are denied within this regime, the right to due legal process. The government even put them – asylum seekers in detention centre merely based on racial profiling assumption – Asylum Seeker, Arab, Muslim are figure of Middle Eastern appearance therefore they are considered as terrorist.

According to Pugliese (2006:7) in the context racial profiling, targeted subjects are represented as figures of fear, suspicion and violence. As a result, they are disenfranchised from exercising the same freedoms and rights as the rest of the citizenry. Of Middle Eastern Appearance depicts racial profiling by the police and the harassment being experienced by Muslim youth in Sydney's West. Simply because the boys were of Middle Eastern appearance and share the same colour hair, skin, and eyes with the real terrorist, they automatically become racially suspect and were treated as criminal. Fadia Abu Karim described furthermore about racial profiling when she was asked the question: 'Do white people have ethnicity'?. According to Fadia Abu Karim:
There seems to be two distinct groups in this country. There is Australian and there is racialize others. If you look at the reporting of crime, you will see when white people suspecting criminal activity, it is reporting that police is looking for a man wearing grey jumper and brown shorts. If the suspect is non-white, he is automatically was said Middle Eastern appearance. That is what you will end up inaccurate and distorted picture. This phenomenon is commonly known as image distortion disorder. People of colour especially men and boys are targeted because of distortion perception of they pose physical threat to white. Stereotype of particular community participate in the continuing of prejudicing policy and actual violence against disempower placing the very body of accusing jeopardy…. The sensitivity around stereotype and distortion largely arises then form the powerlessness of marginalized group to control their own representation. (in Of Middle Eastern Appearance, 2001).

In conclusion, it appears that a series of events over the last decade about 'ethnic crime gangs', 'race rapes', 'invasion' of asylum seeker or 'boat people', the terrorist attacks 9/11, and the Bali Bombing have ignited moral panic about the figure of Middle Eastern appearance and ethnic crime in general. This racialisation of crime and cultural panics have laid behind the response to the events by media personalities. Incidents of 'ethnic crime' have also been irresistible to newspaper, editors, and talkback show producers. In order to understand the complex issue of 'ethnic crime' in Sydney, we need to consider how the social construction of the term 'ethnic' produces a discourse about ethnic crime that often reproduces racist stereotypes rather than challenging them.

REFERENCE

Collins, J. et al (2000) Kebabs, Kids, Cops & Crime, Annandale: Pluto Press.

Cunneen, C, D. Fraser, S. Tomsen (1997) Faces of Hate: Hate Crime in Australia,
Annandale: Hawkins Press.

Lygo, I (2004) News Overboard: The Tabloid Media, Race Politics and Islam, n.p.:
Southerly Change Media.

Osuri, G (2006) ‘Regimes of Terror: Contesting the War on Terror,” Borderlands
Ejournal, vol.5, no.1. Available at:
http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol5no1/osuri.html

Paula Abood, dir., Of Middle Eastern Appearance, Sydney: Metro Screen, 2001.

Poynthing, S (2002) ‘‘Street Arabs’ and ‘Mug Lairs’: racism, class relations and moral panic about Lebanese-Australian youth, in Hage, G. (ed) Arab-Australians citizenship and belonging Today, Carlton South: Melbourne University Press.

Poynthing, S, G. Noble, P. Tabar and J. Collins (2004) Bin Laden in the Suburbs:
Criminalising the Arab Other, Sydney: Sydney Institute of Criminology.

Pugliese, J (2003) ‘The Locus of the Non: The Racial Fault Line ‘of Middle Eastern
Appearance’, Borderlands ejournal, vol.2, no.3. Available at:

http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol2no3/pugliese.html

Pugliese, J (2006) ‘Asymmetries of Terror,’ Borderlands ejournal, vol. 5, no.1. Available
at: http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol5no1_2005/pugliese.html

Said, E (1978) Orientalism, London : Routledge

THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF SUBURBAN SPACE AND ETHNIC ARCHITECTURE

Is Suburbia a utopian idea? Discuss with reference to Sydney
Historically, race has been a central concept in the formation of the Australian nation. It has operated here as a marker to exclude those who were not considred to eligible to be members of the nation. It has worked as a guarantor of a particularised homogeneity. Homogeineity of language and culture as well as race, was throughout the nineteenth century and up until recently, the most basic concern of the nation. Since 1788, the primary basis of Australian culture has been Anglo-Celtic. Following World War II and through to 2000, almost 5.9 million of the total population settled in Australia as new immigrants, meaning that nearly two out of every seven Australians were born overseas. As a result of post-war migration Australia has become a religiously plural, multicultural society.

When migrants come to Australia, they do not choose to settle in country areas. They want to settle in the areas where they can find work, where they can find support services, where they can find other people who speak the same languages and share the same experiences. Culturally, however migrants were always positioned as the unspoken and invisible other of mostly white aesthetic and cultural discourses. Politically, migrants also were always associated with the common experience of racism and marginalisation in Australia. It thus came to provide the organising category of a new politics of resistance, amongst groups and communities with, in fact, very different histories, traditions and ethnic identities.

Negotiating the insertion of new types of building into existing urban environments is often cause of contestation, as they are usually judged on the degree of their departure from what are considered to be original elements. The architectural interventions of recent immigrant groups are particularly problematic in this case, especially if they have overt cultural content and expression or what is considered as ethnic architecture. As well as the more usual disputes about overlooking, site coverage, they must contend with the privileging of the Anglo-Celtic original – indigenous culture. The architectural impact of non Anglo-Celtic societies and cultures in Australia have thus been mainly considered in terms of how built others or other spaces might not be fitting into surrounding styles and forms or existing environments. This essay will analyse whether suburbia is a utopian idea. Furthermore this essay also will analyse the relation between migrant architecture, hegemonic concept of nation/identity and abjection. These aspects will be discussed in turn in this essay.

According to Theophanous (1995:197) multiculturalism is the belief that Australia is, culturally, a pluralist society, that this should be recognised, and fostered to an extent by various means. Howard may well have been the first person to publicly make the link between multiculturalism and national identity in Australia. In interview during the immigration debate, which he ignited in 1988, he argues that the issue [with multiculturalism] is whether the emphasis is on those things that brings us together as Australian nationals rather than on those things that keep us separate, as overseas-born or Australian-born…[He also considers that] national identity cannot be plural. (Stratton, 1998:106-7). In other words Howard sees national identity as something singular, and unifying in its singularity. Like Howard, Alan Jones the host of 2GB talkback radio show also made a statement, which suggests that national identity as something that has to be singular. In November 2003, Jones concludes his Today Show editorial by stating, We are multi-racial but monocultural. And if there are some people who can’t live under the Australian cultural umbrella, then we are better off without them (Lygo, 2004:135). Jones points out that Australian culture is superior to other cultures by declaring we are better off without people who can’t live under the Australian culture umbrella.

The policy of multiculturalism is organised according to a metaphorical spatial structure in which migrant ethnic cultures are peripheral to a core culture, named these days as Anglo-Celtic, which is privileged. The rhetorical distinction has become pervasive in Australia between migrants, who can be people who have been born in Australia but who are from non-British or Irish backgrounds, and Australians, sometimes identified as real Australians. These are the people whose ancestors, it is implied, settled Australia. The privileging of culture gets played out in surprisingly recent development of the discourse of national identity. In Australia, the concern with national identity, as opposed, for example, to some notion of an Australian type, or way of life.

Plato devised the first idea about ideal place in his Republic (4th c. BC). Long after Plato, however Sir Thomas More was the first to apply the word of Utopia (from Greek ou, 'not' + topos, 'place') to a literary genre when he named his imaginary republic Utopia that is ‘place (where all is) well… (Cuddon, 1998:957). Furthermore, More (2003) suggests a welfare state to explain further about the concept of Utopia that is no private property, free universal education, six hours manual work a day, utility clothes, free medical treatment, meals in civic restaurants (meals accompanied by reading or music) and all religions were to be tolerated. The idea of a place where all is well also a utopian analysis which assumes that social structures and process have developed for the good of all and that these tend to represent the best possible practices. The seeming impossibility of utopia and the many failures to create it has produced its converse: dystopia or anti-utopia. A dystopian analysis assumes that social structures and processes do not automatically function for the good of all or even the majority. Dystopian analysis speculate that these may well function to the disadvantage of many, if not the majority.

The ideal city and the dream house are the key symbols in the grand narrative history of occidental architecture. As utopian spaces, the ideal city and dream house are abstract mathematical production. The history of architecture has established a dialectical relation between this ideal-dream and the real inscriptions on the ground – the real city and the real suburb. These spaces are constituted as maps. At the same time other spaces would be seen to be the spaces in the crevice, in the interstices between architecture, or the space of contradiction and ambiguity.

According to Davison (1994:99):
For over two centuries, Australian dreams of the good life have been shaped by a cluster of interrelated ideas we may loosely describe as the suburban idea. The owner occupied, single-storey house standing in its own garden in suburban area was the standard of domestic comfort to which most Australians have continued to aspire.
In other words the suburb has become so closely identify with popular conception of the good life that any move away from it, is apt to be viewed as an attack upon people’s living standard. In this view, the idea of suburban for some people is seen as utopian space or the ideal place to live.

King (1997:57) argues:
The suburb was instrumental in producing the architectural form of the bungalow, just as the bungalow was instrumental in producing the spatial form of the suburb. It was a process that, in the early twentieth century, was to be repeated in the suburbs of Anglophone colonial and post-colonial countries worldwide: the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
In this view, the bungalow (fig.1) is seen as a form of architecture which suitable for the suburbs whether in North America, Australia or in other countries where English is the main language that is spoken. Moreover King points out that in Australia the developments of bungalow in suburban have gone much further than Britain, and suburban, single family, single-storey homes are the typical pattern. The bungalow is generally regarded as the first truly national type of domestic and suburban architecture. Ironically bungalow, in fact, comes from India, which is a non-Western country.

Australia’s suburbs were shaped, decisively, by the successive waves of immigrants who pioneered them. The demands for land, for space and for independence have always been prominent in the aspiration of immigrants to Australia. Earlwood, like many Sydney suburbs held up as monuments to the story of multiculturalism. This area is densely populated. In June 1995, 43,2% of its 129,235 residents were born in non-English speaking countries… The Greek community is the biggest…19% of the Australian born residents have both parents from overseas, and 53% speak a language other than English at home. (Allon, 1997:4). This fact is making Earlwood one of the most multicultural populations in Australia.

One of the significant features of this area has been the transformation of the traditional bungalow and Federation housing styles (fig.2), which regarded as indigenous or national styles of Australian house. As Allon (1997:3) puts it The experience of post-World War II immigration has resulted in the rise of hybrid housing forms, including one style in particular that has been termed, using a rather awkward neologism, Mediterraneanisation. This means that many of the typical red and dark-purple brick bungalows and Federation houses have been changed with what the hegemonic culture labelled as Mediterranean Palace – that is to signify migrant house. The label is given to migrant house because some of them decorate their gateway with sculptures of eagles or lions (fig.3&4). Some decorate their garden and/or backyard with figures of goddess (fig.5&6) and/or mythical symbols (fig.7&8).

Many housing researchers and practioners argue that the interactions of people with their external social, economic, political and physical environments, in particular their houses and local neighbourhoods are important to construct their sense of belonging and identity of the place where they live. Personal identity according to Casey (2000:406 in Easthope 2004:130) is no longer seen as a matter of sheer self-consciousness but now involves instrinsically an awarness of one’s place, [an awareness that] there is no place without self and no self without place. A sense of place can be seen as part of our cultural interpretation of the world around us. Rose (1995) provides a working definition of a sense of place. In her arguments about the nature of senses of place, she argues that A sense of place is part of the politics of identity…this includes the idea of defining oneself in opposition to an other (Rose, 1995:103-4).

As a multicultural society, we have seen a growth in the opportunities for groups of people to meet and experive the initial recognition of difference in Australian. Once difference has been recognised, groups begin to form boundaries to differentiate themselves from the other and this may lead to an idealisation of the group and a negative stereotyping of the other. Penrose and Jackson (1993) address these issues in their discussion of the connections between place, race and nation.

They say that:
The social construction perspective…. reveals that much of what is deemed to be natural or a matter of common sense deeply rooted in the dominant ideologies of particular societies. [Both race and nation are] empowered by their assumptions of naturalness and by their tendency to be viewed as unproblematic by those whom they privilege…place contextualizes the construction of race and nation, generating geographically specific ideologies of racism and nationalism. (Penrose & Jackson, 1993:202-5).
In this view, people’s sense of place can become heightened when they think that it is being threatened. The ideas of home-place thus have equally been important bases for resistance and liberation.

The creation of places is influenced by physical, economic and social realities. As Gieryn (2000:465 in Easthope, 2004:129) explains with reference to the work of Soja, places are doubly constructed: most are built or in some way physically carved out. They are also interpreted, narrated, perceived, felt, understood, and imagined. It means that the physical environment is an essential part of place, but it is always an interpreted element. A work of architecture cannot be seen as merely material point, Architecture intervenes, maps, and signifies and in doing so it constructs identities. Architecture can also be powerfully symbolic - it can take on a totemic quality. Eagles and lions adorning the gateway to the migrant house, for example, they do not merely function as decoration to adorn the gateway, but they carry certain meanings. They are mythical masculine symbols of war and defence. They adorn the gateways of the migrant house – which perceived as big and labelled Mediterranean Palace by the hegemonic culture – in a masculine gesture to fend off enemy. For migrant the hegemonic culture is seen as the enemy. The hegemonic culture recognises migrant houses by these mythical creatures, which guard the gateways and something the site perimeter of the migrant territory.

The migrant house and the migrant enclave according to Lozanovksa (1994:193)
…play in deconstructing a persistent an mythic, hegemonic culture in Australia… the strong negative reaction often associated with the migrant house can be understood by its similarity to abjection – an unconscious revulsion before our own body and ambiguous but necessary precondition for subjectivity. The addition of symbol and signs on the migrant house are seen as physically distinctive. The lions and eagles are no longer just ornamental objects for the hegemonic culture. They become a sign – or representation for migrant as neither subject nor object. They were transferred from object to abject. In other words the lions and eagles become symbol of abjection because they disturb identity, system and order, rules, boundaries or limit of culture and language. Since they are the sign for the abject, thus they become a sign of cultural resistance to dominant.

As Lozanovksa (1994:197 – 198) puts it:
Whilst for migrant these figures are images of power and force, in transfer into mythic signification they become figures of the marginal. They signify the migrant as non-citizen, as other. At the same time though, what meaning do they impose on their environs; as figures of war and defence they signify the environment as a hostile territory, they make visible mythic territorial divisions. They become figures of resistance.

According to Lozanovksa (1994:201-3) The architecture of the migrant house constructs a reversal of the function of tongue between the host culture and the migrant. The host culture respond to the migrant house: it is an architecture of bad taste… a mild form of oral disgust… Ah yuk! Ah yuk is the response sometimes unspoken, to images of migrant house e.g. Mediterranean palace in Australia. Kristeva suggest that oral disgust – aah yuk – signifies the abject. Kristeva identify oral disgust as the most archaic form of abjection and one would extrapolate that aah yuk as a distinctly non-verbal response signifies that the body has already begun to transgress the boundaries between inside and outside, into the space of self-repugnance: abjection.

For Lozanovksa, The migrant house represents the site of the abject for the unstable subject position of the host culture. The migrant house threatens the homogeneity and hegemony as the site of abjection, the migrant house is the limit to its (unstable cultural) subjectivity. In other words the image of territoriality of the migrant house is particular response in the hegemonic culture because it marks the limit to their consistency and standardisation. The migrant houses terrorize the apparent unity of the host subjectivities with disruption and dissolution. The distinctive styles and forms of migrant houses mark both the point of their recognition of difference and therefore the instability of their host subject position. Thus, from this point of view, it seems that suburbia is a dystopian idea.

The geographer Yi-Fu Tuan coined the term of topophilia to describe the affective bond between people and place...this bond may be stronger for some individuals than for others and can be expressed differently by people form different cultures (Duncan & Duncan, 2001:41). Topophilia is an affective response to place by people who live in that place. This means the places and the spaces influence human memories, feelings and thoughts. For the migrants, a backyard to the site of perimeter contained symbolic statues, ornament or signs of ritual elements embody certain meanings, where memories, history and identity are attached to them. All ornaments in migrant backyard function as topophilia for the migrants.

In conclusion it appears that the architectural of migrant houses in Australia have been mainly considered not appropriate into surrounding styles and forms or existing environment. Migrant houses have challenged with the privileging of the Anglo-Celtic original – indigenous culture with their physical distinctive form. The dissimilarity becomes a sign of abjection and resistance to hegemonic concept of nation/identity. For migrant their garden and backyard decorated with symbolic statues and/or ornament of ritual elements have strong connection with their personal and cultural identity. It is a site of resistance and refuge against assimilation ideologies of the dominant culture.

IMAGES

Fig.1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3
N/A

Fig. 4

Fig. 5

Fig. 6

Fig. 7

Fig. 8

REFERENCE

Allon, F (1997) ‘Home as Cultural Translation’, Communal Plural Vol.5.

Cuddon, J.A. (1998) Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory, London: Penguin.

Davison, G (1994) ‘The Past and Future of the Australian Suburb’ in L.C. Johnson (ed)
Suburban Dreaming, Geelong: Deakin University Press.

Duncan, J and N. Duncan (2001) ‘Sense of Place as a Positional Good: Locating Bedford
in Place and Time’ in P. Adam, S. Hoelscher and K. Till (eds) Textures of Place: Exploring Humanist Geographies, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Easthope, H (2004) ‘A Place Called Home’ Housing, Theory and Society Vol. 21 (3).

King, A (1997) ‘Excavating the Multicultural Suburb: Hidden Histories of the
Bungalow’, in R. Silverstone (ed) Vision of Suburbia, London and New York: Routledge.

Kristeva, J (1982) Powers of horror : an essay on abjection, New York : Columbia
University Press.


Lozanovksa, M (1994) ‘Abjection and architecture: The migrant house in multicultural
Australia’ in Johnson, L.C (ed) Suburban Dreaming, Geelong: Deakin University
Press.

Lygo, I (2004) News Overboard: The Tabloid Media, Race Politics and Islam, n.p.:
Southerly Change Media.

More, T. (2003) Utopia, translated by Paul Turner, London: Penguin.

Penrose, J and P. Jackson (1993) ‘Conclusion: identity and the politics of difference’, in
Penrose and P. Jackson (eds) Construction of Race, Place and Nation, London: UCL Press.

Rose, G (1995) ‘Place and Identity: a sense of place’, in D. Massey and P. Jess (eds.) A
Place in the World?: Places, Cultures and Globalisation, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stratton, J (1998) Race Daze. Australia in Identity Crisis, Annandale: Pluto Press.

Theophanous, A.C (1995) Understanding multiculturalism and Australian identity,
Melbourne : Elikia Books.