Once were Westies - Page 6
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 20: Cities on the Edge
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Gabrielle Gwyther
AT FIRST GLANCE, it is difficult to understand why Aspirationals attract so much derision. Why are the attributes of hard work, drive and wealth creation held so highly in the privileged suburbs of Sydney's north and east, yet held to ridicule when practised by those who live in the city's west? More intriguingly, why do Sydney's privileged citizens hold the Aspirationals to a higher standard of moral behaviour? Take, for instance, effort and ambition. Usually regarded as positive attributes, in Aspirationals they become ‘grasping' and ‘greedy'. Where substantial homes and water-guzzling gardens in the city's established leafy suburbs are symbols of success, in the west they are considered wasteful of space and utilities, and an aesthetic blight on the landscape.
While clinging to their harbourside homes, beaches and cooling sea breezes, the residents of Sydney's east condemn Aspirationals for ducted air-conditioning and in-ground pools. Despite their proximity to the inordinate concentration of publicly subsidised cultural facilities, residents of north Sydney snigger at the proliferation of home theatres in the new homes on estates. Those wasteful, materialistic Aspirationals are blamed for greenhouse gas production, growing carbon footprints and urban sprawl, even though on average each resident of Mosman has an ecological footprint of 14.7 global hectares, almost twice the Australian average, and Woollahra residents use nearly twice as much water as Sydney's more water-conscious suburbs and receive more water restriction infringement notices to boot.
During the 1960s and '70s, disparaging Westies facilitated the development of a rhetorical relationship between working-class culture and place. Derision and taunts were deployed to keep the residents of western Sydney politically disempowered and culturally, economically and spatially contained. Perhaps most significantly, confirming and reaffirming western Sydney as the ‘other' established it as a chimera against which the rest of Sydney could positively and confidently appraise itself.
Today's Aspirationals, however, challenge this status quo on a number of fronts. Their use of material acquisition to indicate economic success challenges the perceived entitlement of Sydney's privileged residents to unrestrained consumption. Their petrol-guzzling four-wheel drives and large, air-conditioned houses with countless down-lights and over-sized televisions challenge the unfettered claims of the privileged to the world's dwindling supplies of energy. The Aspirationals' enthusiasm for private schooling challenges the claims of the privileged to superior education, and their political clout challenges the monopolisation of political influence. Perhaps most importantly, however, their master planned ‘privatopias' challenge the apparent right of the privileged to segregate themselves away from the ‘other' in status-orientated, spatial utopias.
On further consideration, the disparaging of the Aspirationals, at least in part, seems to be a response to this group attempting to move beyond its allocated social position. Or perhaps it is a subconscious reaction by Sydney's more privileged citizens as they catch a disturbing glimpse of their own rapacious selves. ♦
Notes
Mark Latham, From the Suburbs: Building a Nation from our Neighbourhoods (Pluto Press, Sydney, 2003).
John Robinson, The Aspirational Class: Social Class or Ideological Category, TASA Conference 2005, University of Tasmania, 6-8 December 2005.
Haydon Manning, Aspirational Voters and the 2004 Federal Election, Australian Review of Public Affairs, www.australianreview.net/digest/2005/07/manning.html, 2005, accessed 23 July 2007.
Sean Scalmer, Searching for the Aspirationals, Overland, 180: 5-9.
Kenneth Davidson, A Tax on the Heartland, The Age, 23 July 2005.
Dennis Glover, How the Aspirationals Were Duped, The Age, 16 December 2004.
Charles Pickett, The Fibro Frontier: A Different Story of Australian Architecture (Doubleday, Sydney, 1997).
Elizabeth Farrelly, Blubberland: The Dangers of Happiness (UNSW Press, Sydney, 2007).
Australian Electoral Commission, Virtual Tally Room, http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionTcpByPollingPlace-13745-131.htm, accessed 18 December 2007.
Denise Wilton, The Mayor's Column, 18 October, www.mosman.nsw.gov.au/new/mayor/2007/10/18/environmental-meeting,2007.
Brian Robins, Water Use Sinks, But Garden Suburbs Still Swim, The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 January 2008, p. 3.
Evan McKenzie, Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1994).