Trouble in the mall again : Naming as Social Drama in Multicultural Melbourne

Through critique and appropriation, this paper uses Victor Turner’s model of social dramas in order to examine the fraught process of cultural change within a diasporic realm. The paper pivots around a proposition to rename a local outdoor shopping mall in suburban Melbourne. The name change was supposedly an attempt to reflect the cultural diversity of this particular area. The social drama this name change engendered is examined in order to reflect upon the position of history in the making of culture. In this instance, history was positioned as something that must be preserved against the requests of ‘strangers’.

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