Understanding Port Melbourne: accounting for, and interrupting, social order in an Australian suburb

Abstract

Any account of a place or people relies on the imposition of order. I present an ethnographic account of Port Melbourne configured in three parts, using the work of Jacques Rancière. First, the material and social geography demonstrate that spatial orders are always underpinned by social order. Second, stories and characters from the suburb reveal such order to only ever be imposed, not inherent. Third, the imposition of order, even when underpinned by the most principled policy commitments, imposes inequality.