Community views : women and the politics of neighbourhood in an Australian suburb

The study of neighbouring and community is a vexed endeavour. In Australia, analytical difficulties are exacerbated by the political nature of suburbia and the ambiguity which surrounds the place of the suburbs in Australian culture. What is well known, however, is that traditionally women have been at the centre of suburban life and are influential in establishing and maintaining everyday neighbourhood communities. Unfortunately, academic knowledge is scant in regards to the experiences and priorities of women in this regard, and of the criteria they use to delineate their communities and determine the boundaries of neighbourhood interaction. This paper considers these issues and reports on a study of neighbouring in an industrial Newcastle suburb. The paper argues that objective class position and life-cycle stage may not, as has previously been thought, be the crucial determinants of neighbouring. Rather, in playng their pivotal role of shaping and defining their residential communities, the women in the study set the boundaries of network inclusion and exclusion by privileging a particular form of housing tenure— ownership.