Identities Journal Blog
  • Home
  • About Identities
  • Blog Articles
  • COVID-19 Blog Series
    • Call for COVID-19 Commentaries
  • COVID-19 Symposium
  • Contact
  • Home
  • About Identities
  • Blog Articles
  • COVID-19 Blog Series
    • Call for COVID-19 Commentaries
  • COVID-19 Symposium
  • Contact

Ethnic community in the time of urban branding

9/10/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
Haymarket/Chinatown is a precinct located in the southern end of Sydney’s Central Business District. The precinct has become part of the City of Villages initiative, promoted by the City of Sydney administration to inject dynamism in the local economy based on the belief that the city is made up of diverse marketable areas, each endowed with a unique identity. Unlike the other precincts in the Inner Sydney area, the point of differentiation chosen for Haymarket/Chinatown is ‘ethnicity’ ⁠— more precisely, an ambiguous multi-Asianness within which images of Chinese communitarian identity occasionally emerge to confer a sense of authenticity to the ethnic place brand. 

In my Identities article, ‘Ethnic community in the time of urban branding’, I observe how these simplified images of ‘groupist’ (Brubaker 2002) Chinese identity emerge from the brand management strategy for the Haymarket/Chinatown precinct despite the diversity of the local business and resident community. I frame these instances as tensions inherent in the process of place branding, which is characterised by the need to essentialise for marketing purposes while grappling with increasing levels of cultural complexity of the most populous Australian city. 

In order to highlight the redundancy of these simplified understandings of ethnic identity, data retrieved via longitudinal ethnographic observation of public events and participation in many activities in the precinct are used to analyse the ‘community’ as a provisional construct. The display of ‘authentic’ Chinese culture in Haymarket/Chinatown by a local Chinese community organisation becomes the focus of my Identities article, with its performative strategies of affiliation and identification nested under the main categories of convergence and alignment.

The first term refers to the backstage operations that contribute to the packaging of a wide range of elements related to Chinese culture into a consistent set of performances, symbols and activities proposed to the outsiders’ scrutiny. I look, for instance, at the organisation of a series of events and workshops characterised by an essentialised Chineseness and at the interchangeable strategic uses of Mandarin, Cantonese and English, depending on the various contexts in which the ‘community’ needs to be presented despite the cultural heterogeneity of its membership.

The second helps to show that this type of consensual ethnicity is also premised upon the ways in which the ‘community’ is made to work in conjunction with the operations of external stakeholders, whose interests intersect with the application of the place brand for the precinct. The collaborations between the community organisation and a local shopping centre become exemplary in this context: the latter provides the internal workings of the former a stage onto which perform authentic communitarian Chineseness during moments of intensified branding. 

This analysis aims to destabilise the idea of ‘ethnic community’ as a given, and it taps into the anti-essentialist critique of ‘community’ as an organising principle of collective forms of identification; the aim here is to show the plasticity of this term, echoing Baumann’s idea that the discourse about ethnic minorities as communities ‘is conceptually simple, enjoys a communicative monopoly, offers enormous flexibility of application, encompasses great ideological plasticity, and is serviceable for established institutional purposes’ (Baumann 1996: 30).

Place branding operates in this context as an analytical filter to show that the ‘community’ is not a group of individuals defined by a shared, unchanging ‘ethnic culture’, but a malleable construction held together as a process of composition, and an active agent that partakes in a sophisticated process of value production based on the engineered association of culture and place.

References:
Baumann, G. 1996. Contesting culture: discourses of identity in multi-ethnic London. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brubaker, R. 2002. Ethnicity without groups. European Journal of Sociology 43: 163–189.

​Blog post by Andrea Del Bono, Western Sydney University, Australia
Read the full article: Del Bono, Andrea. Ethnic community in the time of urban branding. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2019.1629191  ​
0 Comments

    Blog Collection

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019

    Blog Categories

    All
    Academic Freedom
    Activism
    Adolescents
    Adoption
    Affective Solidarity
    Affirmative Action
    African-American
    African Caribbean Self Help Organisation (ACSHO)
    African Diaspora
    AKP
    Aleviness
    Alternative Epistemologies
    Alternative Futures
    Anarchists Against The Wall
    Anthropology
    Antiblackness
    Anti-racism
    Apartheid
    Archives
    Armenians
    Arts
    Aspirations
    Assimilation
    Asylum Seekers
    Australia
    BAME
    Becoming
    Belonging
    Biographical Trajectories
    Biologisation
    Black
    Black Geographies
    Blackness
    Body
    Bosnia-Herzegovina
    Boundary Work
    Boxing
    Brazil
    British Muslims
    Bushfalling
    Cameroon
    Canada
    Capital
    Capitalism
    Caregiver
    Categories
    Causal Stories
    Central Americans
    Chernobyl
    Children
    Children Of Immigrants
    China
    Chinatown
    Chinese Community
    Chinese Immigrants
    Chinese-Indonesian Women
    Citizenship
    Class
    CLR James
    Cognitive Justice
    Colombia
    Colonial
    Colonialism
    Commemoration
    Competitive
    Conflict
    Containment
    Context
    Cosmologies
    Cosmopolitanism
    Counter-mapping
    COVID-19
    Creole
    Critical Race Theory
    Cross-border Marriage
    Cross-national Comparison
    Cultural Geography
    Cultural Policy
    Cultural Scripts
    Cultural Studies
    Cultural Toolkit
    Culture Of Migration
    Curfew
    Decolonial Solidarity
    Decolonisation
    Denial
    Denmark
    Deportation
    Diaspora
    Digital
    Disaster
    Discourse
    Discourse Analysis
    Discrimination
    Displacement
    Diversity
    Divorce
    Domari
    Domestic Violence
    East Jerusalem
    Eating
    Education
    Educational Mobility
    Elite Students
    Emotion
    Employment
    Epistemology
    Ethnic Boundaries
    Ethnic Classification
    Ethnic Identity
    Ethnicity
    Ethnicity And The City
    Ethnicization
    Ethnic Labelling
    Ethnic Minority
    Ethnic Niche
    Ethnic Websites
    Ethnoracial
    Ethnoracial Identity
    Europe
    European Capital Of Culture
    Exile
    Expatriates
    Experiential Knowledge
    Expert Role
    Explicit Normativity
    Exploitation
    Expropriation
    Faith Identities
    Family
    Fandom
    Far Right
    Favela
    Filipina
    Filipino
    Filipinos
    Flanders
    Food
    Football
    Fractal Logic
    France
    Fundamental British Values
    Gender
    Global Neo-colonialism
    ‘gün’ Groups
    Gypsy
    Handsworth Epistemologies
    Hauntology
    Hegemony
    Henri Lefebvre
    Higher Education
    Historical Enquiry
    Hmong
    Hong Kong
    Hospitality
    Humanism
    Humanitarianism
    Human Rights
    Hybridity
    Identification
    Identity
    Ideology
    Imaginaries
    Immigrants
    Immigration
    Immobility
    Impact
    Imperialism
    Implicit Normativity
    Inclusion
    Incorporation
    India Israel Relations
    India-Israel Relations
    Indigenous
    Indonesian Women
    Institutions
    Integration
    Intercultural Communication
    Interdisciplinary
    Interest Convergence
    Intermarriage
    Intermarriages
    International Marriage
    Intersectionality
    Interviews
    Intimate Citizenship
    Invisible Boundaries
    Ireland
    Islam
    Islamophobia
    Italy
    Japan
    Jewishness
    Joint Struggle
    Journeys
    Justice
    Kashmir
    Kinning
    Kinship
    Knowledge
    Knowledge Production
    Korea
    Labour Agency
    Labour Market
    Labour Migration
    Language
    Laowai
    Latin America
    Latinos
    Law
    Legal Discourse
    Liberalism
    Local Identity
    Los Angeles
    Mapuche
    Mariana Islands
    Marriage
    Marriage Migration
    Marseille
    Marxism
    Masculinity
    Media
    Mental Health Services
    Microaggression
    Micronesia
    Middle Class
    Migrant Entrepreneurs
    Migrant Farm Workers
    Migrants
    Migrant Women
    Migrant Workers
    Migration
    Migration Research
    Military Occupation
    Mixed-ethnicity
    Moralities
    Motherhood
    Movement
    Multicultural
    Multiculturalism
    Multiethnic
    Muslim
    Narrative
    Narratives
    Nation
    National Identity
    Nation In Danger
    Nation-state
    Neighbourhood Arts
    Neoliberalism
    Neonationalism
    NGOs
    Nicaragua
    Nigeria
    Nigerian Identities
    Non-governmental Organisations
    Normativity
    Northern Mariana Islands
    Norway
    Nostalgia
    Occidentalism
    Okinawa
    Orientalism
    Othering
    Palestine
    Palestine Israel
    Palestine-Israel
    Parenting
    Peace
    Performativity
    Place
    Place Branding
    Place-making
    Poetry
    Poland
    Policy
    Policy Analysis
    Political Subjectivity
    Politics
    Popular Culture
    Populism
    Post-apartheid
    Postcolonial
    Postcolonial Theory
    Post-war
    Power
    Precarious Status
    Protests
    Public Inquiries
    Public Sociology
    Race
    Race-relations
    Racial Capitalism
    Racial Identity
    Racialisation
    Racialization
    Racial Schemas
    Racism
    Reconciliation
    Refugees
    Religion
    Remittances
    Representations
    Research
    Research Communication
    Research-policy Nexus
    Riace
    Rights Claims
    Role Identity
    Russian Women
    Science Studies
    Scientific Misconduct
    Second-generation
    Securitization
    Self-identification
    Self-victimisation
    Settler Colonialism
    Shame
    Silence
    Singapore
    Sixth Pan-African Congress
    Social Contact
    Social Exclusion
    Social Identity
    Social Relations
    Social Space
    Solidarity
    South Africa
    Sports
    State
    State Power
    State Racism
    Stereotyping
    Stigma
    Stuart Hall
    Student-worker
    Subjectivity
    Sunniness
    Sweden
    Sydney
    Syrian Refugees
    Temporality
    Third Sector
    Third Sector Organisations
    Threat Perception
    Transculturalism
    Transnationalism
    Transnational Racialization
    Travel
    Turkey
    Turks
    Undocumented
    Uprising
    Urban Ethnography
    Urban Multiculturalism
    Urban Space
    Vanley Burke
    Victimhood
    Vulnerability
    Walking
    West Bank Separation Wall
    White Nationalism
    Whiteness
    White Sociology
    Women
    Words
    Worker Exit
    Working Class
    Youth

Explore Identities at tandfonline.com/GIDE