quote: 'our familiarity with these impacts on local culture is both an asset and a liability. we are experienced in the practice of locality and the interpretation of its expressions. this is, after all, the environment in which the community cultural development work takes place. but we also have a dangerous investment in the possibility of harmonious locality, of a community where the crises of globalism can be healed by a unity of purpose and action. i describe this as a 'dangerous investment' not because i have issues with many of the community building outcomes of our work but because the very notion of a homogenous community disallows what may be the real strengths of the local; its disparate identities, its heterogeneous values, its multiple self definitions, its production of dialogue rather than consensus, its capacity to recreate locality in ever changing configurations.'
marla guppy, 'the edge of centre'.
this is actually a very interesting essay. it touches on that whole idea of psychological borders within the city of sydney, but also in neighbourhood identification, on how a street can be both friendly and unsafe.
