Australian Newtown Revisited: Global Restructuring and Local Difference

Abstract

A journey back to Newtown (a pseudonym), the site of one of Australia's earliest sociological studies of suburban life, provides a valuable opportunity to examine continuity and change in employment patterns and the resultant economic fortunes of the working class families that live there. Twenty-five years after the original study, changes to social life that are identified in the paper as of key importance for life in Newtown include: a demise of local manufacturing industry and employment; an occupational de-skilling of the work force; high levels of unemployment; and the growth of female participation in the labour force in part-time work, though a reduction in female full-time employment. How such changes, under the impetus of global economic restructuring, have become manifest in Newtown is traced with reference to the roles of the state and capital in the suburb's birth and subsequent development. Understanding such roles is central to explaining the distinct and increased disadvantage of residents in comparison with those of a neighbouring suburb. The analysis illustrates the importance of recognising geographic variation in the impact of economic restructuring.