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Recent senior anthropologists have heralded a new era where performative social and cultural kinship may eclipse procreational 'biological kinship' in contemporary western society. This article takes research on permanent residents in caravan parks as an extreme case that may act as an exemplar for future western contexts. Between 2003 and 2008, interviews with caravan-park managers, 50 interviews with park residents and short field stays at 17 outer Melbourne and rural Victorian caravan parks, provided multi-sited ethnographic material for analysis. I argue that contemporary contexts for relatedness give scope for creative development of social performative ties with 'ex' spouses and in-laws, friends and pets. 'Biological' kin and family with a material dimension remain central, however, and a response to family need or rupture is often the broadening of the procreative kin links between grandparent and grandchild and between siblings. Childhood institutionalisation and divorce in particular, contributed to pathways towards caravan park housing. Other kin-based motivations include finding safe accommodation for wives; providing housing for young adult males after injury and family divorce; and arranging for housing succession for children. Ideas of blood and folk biology demonstrate considerable resilience in contemporary kinship arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to highlight a link between housing and health that may have been underestimated: the pathway from poor health towards marginal housing in caravan parks. Almost all research on links between housing and health is derived from large-scale surveys and correlational analyses which suggest a causation path from poor housing to poor health. The big picture of such studies may in fact disguise a reality for a smaller group where poor health leads to class 'slide' and reduced housing options. Qualitative data and life histories from interviews probe such 'reverse' links and also flesh out contextual backgrounds. It is argued in this article that evidence from interviews with 10 caravan park managers and 50 residents from 16 parks in outer Melbourne and rural Victoria supports general arguments that poor health appears to be a pathway leading to marginal housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study, conducted for the Department of Human Services (Grampians Region) in Victoria, found that gay men and lesbians experience similar types of stigma and discrimination in rural areas as those in urban centres, but that this was exacerbated by the lack of anonymity in the smaller communities. The hatred of homosexuality can, in some relatively supportive family, community, school and work contexts, transform into a homophobia that embodies a fear of homosexuality which can, and not infrequently does, result in homophobic abuse and violence. Although the majority of research participants in this study were accepting of their sexuality and happy to be lesbian or gay, they nevertheless lived curtailed lives with a blanket around a central dimension of their lives. Furthermore it was found that the experience of gay men is not a mirror image of that for lesbians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to explore emotional attachment to home of permanent residents in caravan parks. Analysis of a small number of life histories, with specific probes around matters of belonging to home, community and place, reveals deeper insight when viewed through theoretical lenses provided by the work of Giddens on ontological security and the ideas around emotion and home provided by housing researchers such as Clapham. The exploratory study, covering a range of caravan parks, has been undertaken in two phases: the first in 2003-4 interviewing caravan park managers (10> and the second in 2006 interviewing permanent residents (12). Findings support the central significance of safety and security for many residents, and provide some strong instances of embodied attachment to home in the park. Although objectively challenged by tenure arrangements and social processes, ontological security appears subjectively achievable for some residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper factors that motivate women to take up and stay in small businesses in rural and regional areas are analysed in relation to research undertaken in 2001 with 359 women from the Western Region of Victoria. A modification of a typology of business motivation developed by Baines and Wheelock (1998) is posited to acknowledge the variety of motivations and aspirations operating among the women. There is a strong theme of family and personal survival and security that in all likelihood reflects a push factor from the macro-economic context of rural decline. On the other hand there is also strong evidence of an achievement theme, showing commitment to entrepreneurial culture and growth, but this is inextricably bound to notions of personal achievement and self-worth, a legacy perhaps from a history of women's invisibility in the rural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns a community, Valinda, on the suburban fringe of Melbourne. It considers the processes by which the community has acted to reject the perceived attributes of suburbanisation. Optimistic aims of progress in the 1940s and 1950s have been replaced by more nostalgic points of view in the 1970s and 1980s, a transition I document in a number of different areas. The paper concludes with an examination of key agents in the anti-suburban discourse and the genealogy of that discourse. Valinda's search for an ecological spirituality, I suggest, particularly resonates with David Tacey's popular Jungian work Edge of the Sacred, published in 1995. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]