‘Bumping into alterity’: Transacting cultural complexities

Abstract

It is commonly recognized that the ethnic diversity that marks Australian society has become increasingly complex. This, however, is primarily seen in terms of the widening sources of Australia's immigration. But cultural complexity is more than this. It isn't just that people live hybrid lives, or live them in diverse neighbourhoods, but that a new cultural complexity exceeds the assumptions of multiculturalism. This is rarely captured in policy considerations. Based on a study of Eastwood, which has been transformed by an influx of Asian migrants, this paper will explore how people ‘manage’ complexity in their interactions. It argues that, in contrast to assumptions about cultural conflict or harmony, there are competing logics of interaction – assimilation, multiculturalization and interculturality – which shape local communities. Such sites are marked by a multiplicity – of ethnicity, scale, flow, space and constituency – and by schemas of perception and orders of interaction which frame the ways we respond to others. This requires capacities to engage with an array of groups, goods and practices and to move across milieux. This paper argues that we can learn much from the local complexities of a place like Eastwood in a renewal of multiculturalism.