Bubble clash: Identity, environment and politics in a multicultural suburb

Abstract

The purpose of article is to examine whether the current feminist philosophies in the intersection of identity, politics and the environment can have practical purchase in urban problem-solving. My argument is mobilised using the story of Greater Dandenong, a multicultural suburb approximately 30km south-east of Melbourne's central business district. This suburb witnessed what I call a ‘bubble clash.’ In recent years, Greater Dandenong has experienced an ecological problem: its seagull population has increased, causing community conflicts over how to manage it. These conflicts have been fought between insular, closed (i.e. bubble) groups. One effect of this ‘bubble clash’ has been that it is incredibly difficult to develop a communal agreement between groups with very different outlooks. Feminist theory has, historically, provided significant resources for understanding this kind of situation. In the article, I review feminist political philosophies – drawing on Iris Young, Patricia H. Collins and Elizabeth Grosz – that help us understand how identity and urban politics relate. My contribution is to add a pragmatic supplement to this body of work. Extending beyond the interpretation of multiculturalism in which ‘differences’ in our identities are given an a priori quality, I propose a ‘transitionist pragmatist perspective’ that (a) reframes how we understand context and contingency in the ongoing formation of subjectivities and their ideals and (b) seeks to trace the history of problematic situations specifically through the lens of problem-solving.

Possibilities of urban research: Temporal difference and the politics of the future

“…But this requires the slowing down or suspension of the dimensions of temporality relating to government demands and the needs of policymakers or research funders for ‘quick wins’, in favour of a research strategy that allows for slowness ‘to arouse a slightly different awareness of the problems and situations mobilising us’ (Stengers, 2005: 994). It is not simply that establishing the conditions for participatory knowledge production (or co-production) requires an investment of time, but that orientating research practice towards diverse and contradictory ways of understanding requires a willingness to confront the plethora of institutional constraints that prevent the urban from being ‘a generative space for encountering difference’ (Jon, 2023: 13). In short, it is not only how research is conceptualised but also the way researchers act while engaged in the process that creates possibilities for remaking urban futures.…”

“…Through Jon's paper, we are directed to think about the (over)population of seagulls in Greater Dandenong not as a set point in time, society or space but as an emergent development formed and reshaped in relation to the experiences, histories and imagined futures of local residents. The seagulls are a problem which surfaces in this specific context because of the ‘different conceptualisations of temporality’ (Jon, 2023: 24) that groups of residents hold. While some value the brief moments of direct human and nonhuman encounter that seagulls provide, others fear the damage to their homes and business premises that might ensue necessitating costly repairs, as well as the future potential for declining property values should there not be a cull.…”

“…Ihnji Jon's (2023) ‘Bubble clash’ proposes that urban conflicts emerge from groups holding and sharing knowledge that is consistent with their cultural and religious beliefs and passing over any views that challenge or contradict their ideological predilections. Using struggles over the management of the seagull population in Greater Dandenong, Australia as a means of empirical illustration, she outlines how a landscape of ‘bubbles’ in which groups are cocooned in separate ‘worlds within a world’ can have implications for urban planning.…”

On seagulls, hedgehogs, and foxes: Representation, reconstruction, and the challenge of getting from here to there

“…Transitionalism refocuses the task of social inquiry from saying that to saying how ; from intellectual debates between contending theorists to charting a route to practical reconstruction; and from assuming the illusory givenness of a problematic situation to a dynamic sensibility that situates the present within the temporality linking the past to the future. “Instead of focusing on epistemic or moral rightness,” Koopman (2009, 12) concludes, “we should instead focus on epistemic or moral melioration, improvement, development, and growth.” Jon (2022, 11) perfectly captures this ethos in observing that “Pragmatists … believe that our path towards a better future lies not upon discovering the extrinsic truth quietly waiting to be unveiled, but upon learning to redesign, rearrange and reconstruct currently existing resources for the betterment of our lives.”…”

“…Now comes Ihnji Jon (2023), seeking to make sense of the multiple reality bubbles that fragment and disrupt a municipality's attempts to deal with the damage to buildings and property values caused by a proliferation of seagulls in Dandenong, a multicultural suburb of Melbourne, Australia. Reflecting the community's cultural diversity, Jon reports, proposals to cull the seagull population or destroy nesting sites on roofs are met by contradictory and incommensurate responses, complicating the municipality's ability to act.…”