Review of 'The Locals. Identity, Place and Belonging in Australia and Beyond'. By Rob Garbutt. Oxford, Bern, Berlin, New York, etc.: Peter Lang, 2011. Soft covers. Pp. xi, 250,+ iv. And with one location figure / map. ISSN 1661-3252. ISBN 978-3-0343-0154-19 (alkaline paper). R.R.P. Euro €38.89 . Also avail. as .pdf download, at same price.

Abstract

This trim and highly legible volume is a related and sharpened focus book by a lecturer, recently awarded his Ph.D., in social science from the Southern Cross University, a tertiary but relatively youthful institution located at Lismore in the north east corner of the Australian state of New South Wales. This climatically and socially relaxed general area constitutes a peculiarly significant aspect of the structure and content of this theoretical and practical study - even as it also has a significant population of Australian Aborigines, as well as being recognised now to be functioning as both a holiday and an alternative lifestyle area for New South Wales, and for Australia generally. In a sense, and this is more true than may usually be claimed, the text is a desperately honest life work /life exploration from its author, if we allow - as we should - that it is formally /spatially based in the actual region of his modest parents' farm, and so, and more generally, of his most significant nurture and identity formation. Yet, for those who have attempted such a returning task, it is clearly a reflective autobiography with so many appraisals of the writer's life over twenty years and more.