Urban Aboriginal lifestyles in Brisbane: mapping vertical and - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Urban Aboriginal lifestyles in Brisbane: mapping vertical and lateral stratification of opportunity for marginalised groups

Robert Funnell

Research question: “Given the opportunity can Aborigines be the equal of the whites in every way?”

1960s Census question

• Many aborigines on reserves & all aborigines excluded

from the census until 1967

• Migration to cities – measures of social (racial) distance &

estimation of population (1950s & 1960s)

• Social demographics & inequalities (1970s and 1980s)
• Census + policy surveys (focus on Aboriginal populations)

History of Aboriginal surveys

Statistically opaque: urban Aboriginal lifestyles Phases of urban statistical research

Phase 1 1950s

• Segregation policy

(Protection Acts)

• Measures of social

distance

• “Suspect

classifications”

• Symbolic force of

legislative regime

Phase 2 1960s & 70s

• Urban migration

from reserves

• First surveys – spatial

& demographic aspects of migration

• Census 1967 –

statistics linked to welfare policies

Phase 3 1980s

• Aboriginal

urbanisation in capital cities

• Comparing household

& census statistics

• No connections made
• Census remains as

the sole statistical benchmark

Limitations of census & separate Aboriginal culture for understanding urbanisation

Census categories and variables No disaggregation to local space

Bourdieu: urban space and lifestyles

Types of capital Volume of capital

The survey: groups & lifestyles compared

• Aboriginal, other residents & recent refugees
• 140 lifestyle variables – e.g. demographics, use of

income, dispositions to future, safety for way of life

• 498 surveys – 80 refugees as supplementary
• Some Aboriginal families in similar positions; others

close to: aspirational Islanders, middle class whites

A “tyranny of distance”: some challenges for applying correspondence analysis:

• Bourdieu’s statistics, CA, not the main game in

Australia – (Hage, race, Teese education)

• Which program? – SPAD, R, SPSS, Excel Stat?
• Richard Volpato – “CA as a practice” – how? – no

founding, second or third generation path breakers (e.g. Brigitte Le Roux, Broady and others)

• If a practice; where to begin the analysis – which

preliminary steps (cross-tabs of columns & modalities, relating outputs to ethnographic detail – to concepts or theory?

Directions

• Interviews with individuals in different and

contradictory parts of space (e.g. Mike Savage, Jan Thorhauge)

• Extension of survey to other higher status groups (on

key questions from this survey)

• Extension of the survey into a prosography (collective

biographies) of the trajectories of Aboriginal people into prominent positions (e.g. sport, cultural performance, authors, politicians, entertainers, public servants, entrepreneurs)