This thesis argues that local ‘neighbourhoods’ of shared understanding are not conceived solely through reference to an imaginary ‘other’ but, instead, may inhere in and be rejuvenated by a tension between internally generated and contradictory ways of understanding collectivity. Among commercial fishermen of the Gippsland Lakes in Victoria (Australia), I show that social facts are generated by agents-acting-in-settings, and that aspects of fishermen’s collective practice and representation are informed by such local contingencies as ‘who you are, what you are up to, and with whom’. The neighbourhood, I argue, is realised in performance, during everyday encounters in occupational contexts such as ‘on the lake’ or ‘down at the Co-op’. But fishermen also imagine togetherness, in different contexts, through the construction of conceptual boundaries, by identifying themselves as, for instance, ‘a fourth generation lake fisherman’. These two modes of conceiving how one belongs to a community – through performance or via recourse to structural ideals, produce remarkably different ways of viewing the world, relating to other people, and relating to one’s surrounds. On the one hand, a community constituted by social interaction relies on action in the present and a view towards ongoing future interactions between community members. This mode of belonging is dynamic and is characterised by movement, towards others and towards the future.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/245140 |
| Creators | Blair, Simone Larissa |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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