Riotous Sydney: Redfern, Macquarie Fields, and (My) Cronulla

Abstract

This paper interrogates the reactions to three riotous events that occurred in 2004 and 2005 in neighbourhoods of Sydney, Australia. At Redfern and Cronulla, the riots appeared to be ‘race’ related, whereas the Macquarie Fields incidents represented an apparent ‘class war’. Parallels between Redfern and Macquarie Fields were also drawn because of the identification of similar circumstances of poverty and dispossession. By delving into the populist accounts of the three events and untangling their discursive threads, a different picture emerged. This paper unearths some of the strategies used to distinguish suburban Cronulla from the stigmatised Redfern and Macquarie Fields. I argue that this separation has served to reinforce the expectation that riotous activities remain the provenance of ‘ marginal’ (racialised, and/or classed) groups. Through a process of remembering—utilising my personal experiences of place—I found an entry point to challenge this understanding about riotous domains by reflecting on some of the underlying tensions and manifestations of wider historical geographies of a city, and a society. This paper traces the production of a societal fabric(ation) that has worked to reinforce and consolidate existing entitlements to urban space and amenity, which have led to violent turf protection in the past and present.